


those who tell the truth shall die (those who tell the truth shall live forever)

by longtime_lurker



Category: Bandom, Fueled by Ramen, Panic! at the Disco
Genre: Angst, Coming Out, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, Mormonism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-14
Updated: 2013-11-14
Packaged: 2018-01-01 11:53:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,144
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1044512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/longtime_lurker/pseuds/longtime_lurker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>et cognoscetis veritatem, et veritas liberabit vos.</p>
            </blockquote>





	those who tell the truth shall die (those who tell the truth shall live forever)

**Author's Note:**

> Brendon-centric, mostly gen with incidental Brendon/OMCs. warning for heaping quantities of gay angst (gayngst?) and all the associated issues you'd expect. 
> 
> please note that although this story incorporates a fair bit of canon from the classic!Panic era - actual interview quotes and such - its whole premise is extra super fictional! and is not intended to reflect any tinhattery about the real Brendon Urie's sexual orientation or personal life.
> 
> title from Explosions in the Sky, section headers from a lovely George Takei quote, summary from the Bible. originally posted to LiveJournal in February 2009.

**1. _you know, it’s not really 'coming out'_**

 

He’s in junior high, a tiny, awkward ball of energy, and he's a couple hours into his first ever real show and Brendon Urie has never seen anything like it. 

Even at this age Brendon knows enough about music to get that the band (Creed, parent-approved for their vaguely Christian bent) isn’t that great by itself. But being _here_ for this, the live experience, somehow that's totally different. Brendon’s kind of an excitable kid in the first place, but this all-encompassing thrill - mind and body, like he’s part of something huge - this is all new, astonishing, so much holier than church, so much bigger than himself.

He wants to live in it forever. It’s the vibration of the bassline coming up through the floor into the soles of his sneakers, the eager way the crowd responds, the heat and percussion and the jostling bodies around him. He’s been half-hard since the show started; it's the first time he’s ever had that physical reaction for very long, and it just adds to the enormous newness of it all.

Brendon's overwhelmed, delighted - and at the same time he feels that there's a change coming, deep and obscure, a change that can't ever be undone.

And that's when the frontman takes his shirt off onstage. Scott Stapp, pin-up of choice among the more pious girls in Brendon’s youth group, who looks kind of like the Jesus picture in Brendon's living room. Except with more tattoos. So far he's spent the whole concert strutting around in leather pants and striking vaguely messianic poses, and it made Brendon roll his eyes a bit; but now his torso gleams with sweat under the bright lights, the muscles of his back and arms and shoulders rippling, and the venue screens blow it all up to giant-size, God-size, and - 

Brendon's just swept up in the music and the glow and the audience screams, that's all it is, but he can’t breathe or look away. 

On the van ride home he babbles to his mom about how _inspirational_ it was (she clearly thinks he means, like, all spiritually uplifting or whatever - and maybe that is what he means; after all, he’s only thirteen, and passion is passion is passion) and he goes to bed, finally, very late that night, and has his first wet dream: a hot blur of lights and attention and guitar riffs and hard male bodies. 

\- 

Growing up Mormon and sheltered in a high school setting (in Vegas, no less) apparently messes you up about sex _period_. In the next few years Brendon's plenty confused and repressed without any extra complicating factors, thanks. Anyway, it’s not like anybody’s lining up to do it with him. Brendon's already been dismissed by his peers as Weird: too loud, too transparent, too enthusiastic, too hungry for attention. 

So in those years, whenever he feels a little off - like he differs in some strange sweet secret way from the expectations of parents, church, even the kids at school - he just chalks it up to being teenaged and ADHD and all mixed up about religion and rebellion, to being a total pathetic virgin and a bit of a musical prodigy (and then, incredibly, _in a band!_ ), to bucking family tradition by choosing to make a trip-hop-cabaret-dance-punk album instead of doing a mission. To being, you know, weird.

The first stirrings of real knowledge don't begin to rankle until he has to move out on his own. Brendon jerks off a lot, in the exhausted minutes between work shifts and school and practice, to help damp down the stress and get to sleep; and those are the minutes when he starts to find his eyes straying from the Victoria's Secret catalogs he steals from his upstairs neighbor, his mind shying away from the female forms that wallpaper this city. When the trembling moment just before orgasm starts filling up with thoughts, wishes, fantasies so secret and sweet and strange that even inside his head he won't put words to them. 

Brendon's a child of his generation, willing to tell the whole cyberworld things he won't even tell himself, and for a brief time in high school his MySpace reads, _Orientation: Not Sure._

\- 

Once Panic blows up everything starts happening all at once, and suddenly they're all finding themselves the objects of exponentially more female attention than ever before - especially the “so cute!” lead singer with the emo hair and nice butt. Brendon, still in that first flush of rebellion, takes advantage of that fact as often and as vigorously as he can. 

But it doesn't take many times for him to realize that, _so cute!_ or not, he isn’t good at the whole girl thing. With girls Brendon does everything wrong: has to be drunk or high to fuck them, always wants to do it in the ass instead, likes to come on faces or clothes or any-fucking-where but pussy. The first few girls mostly let him - and when they don't, there are always more willing and available - but he meets his match in a brittle scene queen. 

The first and only time he tries the "oops, sorry, it slipped" thing with Audrey, she slaps him so hard that his ears ring and then cuts off all sexual contact for a week. Brendon kinds of likes that about her, that she won't put up with his shit, and he's not unhappy when she somehow ends up his girlfriend. 

They camwhore and make out and camwhore while making out; Audrey introduces him to a gazillion people, to that strange indefinable world known as The Scene. They get drunk and go for sushi, they party in pirate garb and do each other's hair. He's not unhappy about being with her _[her]_ and that's a good sign, right?

-

This one night on tour he's hanging out with Amanda from the Dresden Dolls. Brendon doesn't know her very well - she takes more of an interest in Ryan than in him - but they’re all a little bit in awe of her, and she is never not interesting to talk to. 

They've both had a little bit to drink and they're bitching about Panic's fans, the infatuated teenagers who are already coming around the buses, and somehow that ends up sliding into a conversation about women in general. Brendon's got a million half-sarcastic jokes and questions and complaints; Amanda listens patiently and meets each one of them with her own strong, articulate opinions and insights, and they keep talking far into the night.

Brendon’s never been any good at being opaque, not even with the protective layer of humor, not even when the stakes are this high, and Amanda's one of those people who _notices_ things. Later, he doesn’t even remember what it is he says - nothing definite, not even close - but there’s this moment where Amanda slants a glance at him from underneath her painted brows, and... 

She never says anything about it, not that night and not after, not to him and not (as far as he can tell) to anyone else. Amanda's not somebody who would, not unless you went ahead and brought it up yourself. But the way she looked at him...yeah, Brendon thinks later that it might've been her, the first, his first. 

First to know. He couldn't ask for better, probably. Amanda with her easy bisexuality and her brain that Brendon wants to crawl inside and stay in; Amanda with the big laugh and clear eyes that seem so at odds with her bitter, raging songs about the awful hidden things inside. 

It’s kind of random, that it's someone he tours with once and then pretty much never sees or speaks to ever again. Or maybe it’s not random at all: maybe that’s exactly why. 

 

 **2. _which suggests opening a door and stepping through._**

 

He starts drinking with the Academy guys because it's fun. Except pretty soon it's to the point of oblivion almost every night, because that lets him just not think about _[things]_ for a little while. About Brent's increasing distance, about Ryan's stony silences during Brendon's hungover mornings. About the band's dizzyingly quick rise, and about his own nice new reputation as, 

"'This really great guy,'" Audrey recites, fingerquotes and all, "'unless you sleep with him.'" She looks at Brendon. "You know that's what the girls on tour say about you? And I _defend_ your ass, every time, but now I'm starting to think they're right."

They're fighting again. There's been more and more stupid drama between them lately, overlapping messily with Jac and Ryan's own problems, and Brendon knows it won't be long now. 

"Just - there is something you resent so damn much about me,” Audrey tells him, “and the awesome part is that I don’t even know what it is.” She picks at her manicure with affected boredom, but her voice gives her away: scraped raw, like she’d like to be yelling but can’t even find the heart to. "Lots of people hate me, I don't care about that, but I didn't do shit to deserve it from _you._ " 

For a minute she looks her age, young and tired and disappointed, and Brendon feels like a dick. He thinks, for some reason, of the way she used to mock his hyperactivity in bed, remembers the night she plied him with Smirnoff until he'd gone slow and calm and mellow enough that she could teach him how to go down on a girl. 

He opens his mouth to - he doesn't even know. Apologize? _[confess?]_ But then Audrey goes on, "Is it 'cause, is it 'cause of what I _am?"_ and her lip curls in that way that never bodes well.

"What do you mean, what you are?" he shouts back, louder than he meant to. "A psycho bitch?"

"A _girl,_ " Audrey hisses, "you know, like with a _pussy._ Hell, I bet you'd rather be -" 

Brendon doesn't know if those sharp eyes of hers have actually picked up on something or it's just a random dig, a shot in the dark on her part - it wouldn't be the first (or five hundredth) time someone's made insinuations about his masculinity to insult him. But this time it hits too close to the bone, makes him recoil, and Audrey’s face animates with the nasty glee of having found a nerve.

He shouts some more, and she storms out on him; and after the inevitable breakup she uses that sore spot against him, and even her petty rumor-mongering confirms all of Brendon’s worst intuitions as to what happens when you let people _[suspect]_.

\- 

On their first UK tour Brendon, ever the outgoing drunk, starts chatting with a couple of well-dressed guys about his age in a pub. Their accents may be unfamiliar, but the tilt of their bodies is unmistakable when one asks, “So, luv, are you part of the family, then?” 

Brendon’s heart does its usual leap-skip-sink at the penultimate word. Shaking it off, he says, “I’m sorry, I - what is that?” 

The guys kind of grin at each other, and the second one says plainly, “Let us buy you a drink, pretty boy.” 

“Oh,” Brendon says, nervous laughter like a reflex. “Oh, no no no. I mean, I - I support that, but I’m not. No. Thank you, though?” 

He has one of those moments of uncomfortable clarity where he thinks he must look like such a tool, a half-wasted American in eyeliner stammering defensive denials. But he flashes them a big apologetic smile, and escapes - though not without receiving a pinch on the ass that pleases him and freaks him out and pisses him off, sends distress and excitement and fury sparking all through him, hopelessly tangled together.

\- 

He knows it's stupid, but when Brent goes some part of Brendon worries that his friend had seen _[it]_ somehow on Brendon, as if he had something written on his brow like that stupid fucking book they made everybody read in high school English (Brendon pictures a giant red F for _[fag]_ Freak, flashing like a light on the Strip, and giggles despite himself); as if Brent knew something he didn't, as if that was why - 

Brendon _knows_ it’s stupid, he does. It's just like how he freaked after getting kicked out, as if _[that]_ was the reason his parents closed the door in his face. It's nothing but paranoia.

Of course (as Pete is so fond of saying) just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they aren’t out to get you. Panic's rising fame plus Panic's sexual ambiguity mean that strangers are starting to talk, ask, wonder, and for a while the gay rumors flit indiscriminately around pretty much every member of the band.

Brendon's the most vehement in his denials, the most flagrant about overcompensating. Ryan talks all the time about construction of the self, how you can make yourself into whoever you want to be, and so Brendon plays straight just like he plays the brash confident frontman. The latter takes splendidly - a costume that fits him like he was born for it - and he hopes that maybe, maybe, given some time, the former will too.

He's done with the church but he must still believe in the power of faith, because he tells the lie so well that for a while in there, he damn near begins to believe it himself. 

\- 

That approach does approximately fuck-all to discourage the questions and assumptions, so Brendon swings right around to the opposite extreme, which might best be described as hiding in plain sight. Armed with the creative imagination of one Ryan Ross - a kid who was himself making endless gay jokes just a couple of years ago - he sets out to make his band pretty much the gayest thing in history. 

It's not difficult. Panic's already got a contrarian streak: "They want gay?" Spencer says, grinning. "We'll _show_ them gay." Brendon's already prone to flamboyance and theatrics, and he lets that shine through unfiltered. He already deals with serious things, with anxious half-submerged thoughts, by joking about them - poking and prodding them nonstop, exaggerating them until he makes them ridiculous - and all of that goes into the new stage show. 

Made-up men and mustached women, exotic dancing and cabaret fashion and surrealist weddings and the lead singer stalking his guitarist hungrily across the stage. The whole thing oozes sexuality, and yeah, it also oozes queer. 

"I think that says something," Ryan says with satisfaction, "like, that we're secure enough in ourselves to mess with it, you know?"

"Yeah," says Brendon, "totally!"

And night after night, he finds himself looking at the supple girl stretched across his lap with trouble written on his brow - _You're getting a lap dance in front of a thousand people. She's gorgeous, she's a trained professional, she's all over you. This is everything you ever wanted back when no girl would look at you. You should be so into this. What is_ wrong _with_ \- and then the joking with the guys later - "Yeah, and I'm all 'shit, I _better_ not pop a boner right here onstage,'" and (just to make Ryan bristle hilariously), "Remind me, what dickbag had the idea for this stage show again?" - while his head is swimming. 

\- 

He barges into Lucent's trailer one evening, looking for Jon, and who should he find but Dusty and Katie Kay - facepaint off, shadows thrown huge against the wall - kissing on the mouth, soft and leisurely like they've got all the time in the world, not a care in the cosmos. 

Something in Brendon wrenches and jolts, hard and painful, and it takes him a minute to place the feeling. It's not the glaze-eyed, blissed-out thing that he sees on the faces of tourmates when they're watching girl-on-girl. It's more like the way he used to feel in junior high, when his standmate would pop open a can of ice-cold Coke in band practice, or on Friday afternoons when Brendon knelt at his locker packing up his books and hearing kids yell to each other about hanging out that weekend, about parties and dates and how blazed/wasted/laid they were totally getting, _fuck yeah!_ It's breaking the tenth commandment; it's wanting something that can't be his. 

Envy, and the worst part is that it doesn't feel like envy of either woman separately. It feels like envy of the both of them, together. 

Dusty opens her eyes, Katie following right after, and they see, they see him watching. Brendon opens his mouth to say something, he doesn't know what, but the girls exchange a quick eyebrow arch and then Dusty says gently, lightly, "Hey, Brendon, what's up."

"Care to join us?" Katie says, as if it's no big deal, as if it's just that easy, and, "You can, if you want," confirms Dusty. 

Doing two hot women at once, that's like. Classic rockstar, right there. Yeah, of course he wants. 

He should want. 

"I - can't," Brendon blurts out, and he tears his eyes away and he runs out of there like all the demons of hell are at his heels, but it's too late for what he knows about himself. 

On tour there is no place you can go where no one will hear you cry. 

 

 **3. _it’s more like a long, long walk_**

 

He tries _so_ hard not to get all weird about it, even after that first real shock of self-awareness. Yeah, he chases Ryan with kisses every night and even gets in the occasional assgrab, but just because Brendon's maybe _[don’t say it, don’t think it]_ doesn't mean that he's necessarily going to be all about every guy on the planet, and Ryan will always be one for the OH HELL NO camp. (Brendon loves him like an actual brother, and he supposes the kid's easy enough on the eyes, but... _Ryan._ ) 

Despite his best efforts, touring is inescapably weird because touring is boys and boys and boys. Boys in his space, all the time, boys laughing, boys touching him, all day long, boys everywhere. And sure, when Brendon's up there in performance mode he kinda gets off on the nebulous mass feminine presence of the fans - hell, they all do, it’s _flattering_ \- but it's in front of boys that Brendon really lights up, shows off, sparkles. He knows it. 

He wonders if it’s obvious.

-

He's having drinks (non-alcoholic) with Ryan at some afterparty when a small, clinging person leaps on him. "Brendon, my man! Can I just say, you motherfucking _killed_ 'em tonight."

Brendon throws his head back and laughs, joyful, flushed with the certain knowledge that for a little space of time he'd held a whole crowd in the palm of his hand. "Thanks, Pete."

Pete squeezes Ryan's shoulder and pulls up something on his sidekick to show Ryan, handing it over before he deposits himself into the free seat next to Brendon. "Seriously, though, you were great up there. Owned the stage. The friend I was with, she was saying that you could've gone into acting."

"Back in high school I used to think about maybe doing that someday," Brendon says, which is true. Although his first choice would have been 'hairdresser', and isn't that just fabulously stereotypical.

Pete ruffles his hair and laughs, "I don't know, dude, do you realize how amazingly fucking gay the theater world is? I don't know how your little Mormon sensibilities would've handled it."

Brendon bites his lip. 

"I know what you mean, though," Pete continues, a touch more seriously. "Like, the...that possibility of being a whole different person up there, for a little while, you know?" and as Pete turns to talk to Ryan, Brendon thinks _yeah, exactly, yes._

He really does love something about the idea of picking up and dropping one persona after another, and half-consciously Brendon brings that sense of performance into his own world and job and life. He's the baby rockstar on camera, the dramatic-eyed emo kid in a magazine spread, the campy sexual pursuer onstage, the relaxed hippie stoner at the cabin, the fun-loving drunk at parties, the bridge-mending youngest son back home. He's a regular kid in jeans by day and an overdressed dandy by night, and he gays it up cheerfully with his band and hopes hard that if he makes enough of a Thing out of it, he can get some distance from it.

Ryan would probably use some metaphor about how the best disguise is a mask so lifelike that people mistake it for your actual face. If Ryan knew, which he doesn't. Brendon's almost positive that none of them do. 

The best lies, as it turns out, are half-truths. 

-

Early on, immature and insecure, they were all constantly making those jagged-edged jokes about feminine wiles and emotional neediness and gold-digging groupies and the grossness of muff-diving. _Fucking chicks, right, I don't even know,_ and - it’s not necessarily something he’s proud of, but it was easy for Brendon to blend, as it were. 

But Spencer met a high-schooler at a show in Milwaukee, and Ryan started talking to one of their dancers at the VMAs, and Jon stayed resolutely and adorably faithful to his college girl back home, and then somehow somewhere along the way half the label started getting engaged and married and having fucking _kids_ , and now everything’s changed out from under Brendon. His bandmates' sex lives are no longer something they shoot their mouths off about; even when they do get drunk and swap anecdotes, it tends to get kind of soft-eyed and reminiscent, less _I totally scored, validate me_ and more _I have good times with this person that I really like._

Brendon thinks (knows) that it's better now, no longer using sex as a weapon or treating it like a game; but that doesn't fix the feeling he gets, sometimes, of being left behind. 

"Yeah - Bden doesn't really like to, you know, eat at the Y," someone will say, laughing, as Brendon makes a face for _never have I ever gotten a chick off with my mouth more than once in a row_ and sits there while the rest of the circle downs shots. 

It's not like it's this big thing, really. Brendon’s read up on his history of ‘confirmed bachelors.' Plenty of people have stayed closeted all their lives, never admitting anything, leaving biographers to argue the question endlessly after their deaths. A lot of them even lived with partners on the down low. 

"I am _loving_ the single life," he tells people, usually accompanied by a suggestive eyebrow waggle. "I figure, I'll deal with the future when it gets here, you know?" And mostly he means it.

He can deal. He's not lonely very often, and anyway loneliness is a comparatively simple problem. He’s young, he's happy, he's having fun, he loves his friends and their music. He’s really fucking lucky, has a million things he never thought he’d have. There's no point getting greedy. 

The only thing he does wish for, once in a while, is someone to tell. Brendon's not all that great at holding stuff inside.

\- 

This one time, outside the buses, he overhears Eric asking Jon in a voice that's lowered but evidently not enough, "So hey, man, question: what's Urie's deal?" 

There's a moment of silence where Jon must be squinting confusedly at Eric and Eric must be making some kind of meaningful expression or gesture or something, because Jon says, "Oh! Oh. Yeah, I don't really know?" 

"He isn't - is he -" 

"I don't think _anybody_ really knows at this point." Long drag off a cigarette. "Hell, I really don't know if _he_ knows. One way or the other. You know?"

"Okay, no, cool," Eric says. "I was just wondering. I didn't wanna like, completely put my foot in it or something." 

"No, I get it, dude. Yeah, I dunno. He's - had girlfriends? I don't know, maybe that - the way he is, maybe that's just all him, you know?" Jon affects a vampy voice: "'Not gay! Just Brendon!'" 

Laughter. It’s not malicious, though, and the eavesdropping Brendon is most amused himself.

"Yeah, for sure. Well, hey, cool. If - good for him, or whatever." 

"Yeah." 

Nobody says anything to him about it, of course. 

\- 

They're all watching _Speed_ at Spencer's house one day, half-stoned and ripping the movie apart, and Ryan and Jon are in the middle of a desultory argument over the dubious appeal of Keanu Reeves: Ryan thinks that 'the dude looks like a serial killer' while Jon maintains that he 'can see why chicks dig him, that’s all I’m saying.' 

It’s about to degenerate into popcorn-throwing when Brendon interjects with all the easy casualness he can command, “Eh, I’d hit it,” and then holds his breath to see if they take it in stride. 

He’s ready to retreat into one of several defenses - a hands-up _kidding, kidding_ or _you know, on like, an_ aesthetic _level_ \- if he needs to. As it turns out, he doesn’t. Spencer just says, “You have shitty taste,” and Ryan smirks in Brendon and Jon’s direction and says, “Over _ruled,”_ and Jon says, “How is that overruled? It’s two against two!” and Ryan says smugly, “Spencer counts for one and a half,” and Spencer says, “Are you calling me fat?” and Ryan says, “Well I was _trying_ to call you awesome, but _clearly_ you can’t take a _compliment”_ and so forth, and the banter moves on and the moment's over. 

Brendon hasn't ever said that kind of thing - hasn't even joked about it - while both sober and offstage. His band hasn't ever acknowledged, even tacitly, that their singer might _have_ any kind of taste (shitty or otherwise) in boys. And now that implication’s sitting there, unspoken, the elephant in the room. 

Unless of course it’s just that they’re used to Brendon saying ridiculous shit. That’s also a very real possibility. 

 

 **4. _through what began as a narrow corridor_**

 

"Not gonna lie," Brendon tells his phone headset, "this whole break thing is making me antsy as hell."

"Poor Brendon," Jon's amused voice comes back at him, all fake sympathy. "Doesn't know what to do with himself when he's not in the public eye, surrounded by admirers, getting constant attention..."

"Yeah, yeah, fuck off. It's just a lot of _time_ on my hands all of a sudden, you know?"

"Yeah, some of us actually enjoy that, dude."

"I know, it's just - I mean, it's been a while since we were - I hate having all this alone time." Brendon laughs, but even in his own ears it sounds a little off. "Like I hate how it really forces you to think, to think about. Stuff. I don't know." He laughs again. "You know how I am." 

"Yeah, a fuckin' weirdo, that's what. So what _have_ you been up to, out there?"

"Working on my playing," Brendon says promptly. "Been getting some voice training; Ross, too. Um...going out some, wherever my underage ass can get in..."

Jon laughs at him.

"Double fuck off, old man. Oh! And I've been seeing my folks a lot."

"Oh yeah? You guys doing better now?"

"Yeah. Kind of...reconnecting, or whatever. So that's been cool." He tries, mostly unsuccessfully, to modulate the happiness in his voice. "I mean, like, I guess we're all still kinda walking on eggshells a little, but...Yeah, things are cool for now."

"Hey, sweet, that's great -" 

"So how's Cassie? Say hey for me." Brendon thinks briefly of the scene queen wannabe he's been fucking around with, on-and-off, but he doesn't mention her to Jon. He doesn't know what he'd say, anyway. She gives okay head and isn't as hot as Audrey, and that's pretty much the sum total of Brendon's thoughts on her.

-

The trouble with lies is that the longer you keep them up, the more work it takes to finally untangle them.

\- 

Brendon isn't sure why he's taking a taxi to the Vegas LDS temple at three in the morning. He's really, really drunk right now. His alcohol-soaked brain pictures dramatic gestures of rebellion: something stupid and juvenile and Pete-like, maybe pissing against the main doors of the building, whatever. He doesn't know why. He is really fucking drunk. He's drunk and he got that way all by himself, look mom, no hands, no buddies, just a few hours and a bottle of tequila. He drank and he drank and he _drank_ but no matter how much he had, he couldn't fucking seem to blot out the fucking reason why he was fucking doing it in the first place -

They're coming up on his destination, and it's all epic and triumphant in Brendon's head, but after they actually get there - after Brendon shoves a haphazard handful of cash at the driver to make him go away - it's not like that at all. 

Brendon hasn't been to temple in years. He stands outside the fence in the dark, hunched into his hood, and he stares up at the beautiful building and feels nothing. No regret, no tug of longing, no nostalgia or even guilt, just the heavy miasma of too many memories hanging around his shoulders. 

He knows, now, with the fearful irrevocable certainty of revelation, that there's no going back. Not this time. Not after -

Maybe the way he doesn’t miss it is the worst part; maybe it's that lack that trips some switch inside of him. Maybe that's why next thing he knows he’s rooted to the spot, alcohol haze gone harsh and ugly, mindlessly biting his fingernails bloody as a frantic red tide races up over his brain. 

Brendon always thought that 'breakdown' was just a figure of speech, only now he really does feel like he’s going to shatter and fly apart. He grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes tight shut, but still his omnipresent jitters increase until he just wants to shake off his skin and scratch out his heart's desire, the thing inside him that finally led him to -

 _[say it, SAY IT]_

\- hook up - tonight - for the first time - with another - his first -

In those moments of blinding terror, when he can't think what to do, he fumbles for his phone. He stabs blindly at the speed dial for Spencer, who always knows what to do. He asks in a thin, blank voice if Spencer can pick him up.

Spencer must recognize something very wrong ("are you drunk?"), because he drops whatever he's doing ("Urie, seriously, how drunk are you?"), lets Brendon give him some really shitty directions ("you _okay,_ though?"), and says he’ll be there as soon as he can ("don't go anywhere, all right?") 

Brendon shoves his phone back into his hoodie pocket with nerveless fingers, slumps against the front gates. Shuddering uncontrollably now, and he's not crying exactly - there are no actual tears - but the awful hurt animal sounds of crying float unheard across the grass. He remembers belting out hymns in a voice not yet broken, and he remembers mouthing his way over the cut lines of a boy's hips, grooved arrows that point the way he's meant to go: down, down, down.

Brendon sways on his feet, stares up at the white spires and wishes, without hyperbole, to die. 

He stands there until Spencer’s Nissan finally pulls up and parks illegally in front of the temple. Spencer jumps out and approaches Brendon gingerly. "Hey, man," he says. "What's going on?" 

"Spence," Brendon says, words slurred. "Spence, I slept with a guy and I want to do it again and I think I will," and then he bends double and throws up violently all over the temple lawn. 

\- 

Spencer, mercifully, doesn’t say much that night. He looks at Brendon in this deeply unsurprised way, he bundles Brendon into the car, he pulls over twice to let Brendon puke again, he takes Brendon back to his own place, he puts Brendon to bed to sleep it off.

The next morning (or possibly technically afternoon) Spencer bustles around for ages doing everything he can for Brendon’s aching head and roiling stomach, while Brendon himself slumps over the kitchen table, silent. _Finally_ Spencer sits down with him, and the ensuing conversation - in the course of which they make it through an entire pot of coffee before Spencer even manages to broach the G word - will probably rank forever in like the top three most fucking awkward of Brendon’s entire life, and that's really saying something.

That whole first time is the worst by far, a sharp slice of agony like ripping off a bandage all at once, if the bandage was his entire life up to that point and the gash underneath was his own self torn right open. 

"I hear it gets easier from here on out," Spencer offers, trying a smile, and Brendon smiles back, awkwardness be damned. 

-

When he tells Jon it's all halting prep talk leading up to it, Brendon hemming and hawing forfuckingever until he finally mumbles something stupid like, "So the thing is: I'm pretty sure that I kind of bat for the home team." There's this long silence, and Brendon thinks _oh shit oh shit oh shit_ until Jon finally leans forward and prompts, all kind and curious and matter-of-fact: "Right, and?" 

Totally anticlimactic, and Brendon’s so deflated it’s probably kind of hilarious. The idea that he’s been blatant enough that Jon just _figured,_ that kind of horrifies him and kind of doesn't. On the one hand, Brendon doesn’t want to think about people looking at him and somehow _knowing_. But on the other hand, hey, it might save him some trouble. 

Later - smoking up on the cabin roof - Jon laughs and goes, "Dude, you looked so freaked out that I was afraid you were going to tell me something actually super drastic, like you were in mad homo love with somebody in the band." 

"Nah," Brendon says airily. "Uh, none of y’all are really my type? No offense."

"None taken, dude." 

-

He thought Spencer would have told Ryan, but it doesn't take him too long to realize that Ryan really doesn't have a clue. To be fair, lately Ryan's been even more distracted than usual: he and Keltie have been getting pretty serious, and he's been going around looking happier than Brendon's ever seen him, all glowing with the pride of belonging to someone special. It’s a good look on him. 

“Now you just have to find the right girl," he says drily to Brendon one afternoon, when three-fourths of the band are discussing their significant others over a round of GTA, "and we'll all be one big happy family."

Everyone else goes quiet at once and it's more telling than any confession could be. Ryan looks from one face to another, his eyes widening minutely, and when Brendon puts down his controller and says (too quickly, the words tripping over each other) "Ross, hey, um" and "You should probably know” and "I don't think there's actually gonna be a right girl for me", well - it's all pretty much superfluous anyway. 

Ryan responds (too slowly, stilted like he’s afraid he’s of saying the wrong thing) “Oh. I. That’s - a complication.” He looks at Brendon like he’s re-evaluating their entire past history in the light of this new discovery, which is a very Ryan thing to do but which makes Brendon squirm.

Ryan always hates not being in the know about anything, and from the looks Ryan's shooting at Spencer, Brendon can tell that he's pissed about that part - but he doesn't think it's that Ryan has a problem with the news per se. He hopes.

Later Ryan seeks him out, looking uncomfortable. Ryan will never not suck at apologies, but he does eventually manage to get out, "I - look, just, I'm sorry if I made it harder for you. With the - you know. All of it." 

Brendon, weak with relief, retorts, "Oh, but Ross, you _always_ make it _harder_ for me" (wink) "if you know what I'm saying," and then is suddenly unsure if he's allowed to make that kind of joke with the guys anymore. But Ryan laughs, real and relieved as well. 

"I just. I didn't know, truly," he says. "That's all." And then, "mmmmf," as Brendon half strangles him in a hug. 

In the back lounge Keltie is eating peanut butter and sugar sandwiches and watching DVDs of some show. Brendon, his heart lighter than it's been in a long while, joins her just in time to catch a line or two of dialogue. _...the way He intended you to be, and that goes for every person, every planet, every mountain, every grain of sand, every song, every tear and every faggot,_ and Brendon jolts into sudden stillness like someone wrote it expressly for him. 

Whether Keltie notices or not, she doesn't do anything except offer him a sticky-sweet bite of her sandwich. 

\- 

Brendon doesn’t tell Shane for a long time. He's kind of freaked to do it, honestly. He _lives_ with the dude, and what if Shane comes over all uncomfortable and stutters some bullshit about how it's totally cool with him, really, man, but by coincidence he's just decided to move in with Regan, bye, have a nice life? 

Shane's a good guy, but still. Brendon is all too aware that some guys can get really wigged out about these things, and he doesn’t have so many friends (real ones, in any case) that he can afford to lose them over this kind of shit. 

One night at home they’re cross-tripping like crazy and Brendon comes out, kind of without meaning to, through a fog of chemical safety. Shane goes, “Huh, is that right. Can you throw me another Molson?” and doesn't alter a goddamn thing about them, then or ever, unless you count the fact that he no longer tosses his _Playboy_ s to Brendon when he's done with them. 

Shane, Brendon concludes, is basically just a whole lot Older And Wiser than he is.

-

Zack says, "It’s cool, there's no way the dudes trying to get at you could be any scarier than the ladies already are," and leaves it at that. 

 

 **5. _that starts to widen_**

 

He pushes the threesomes-with-guys idea one too many drunken times, and things with Lana Jade go sour. At this point Brendon can't say he's surprised.

"You're not gonna be hot shit forever, you know," she sneers at him when he breaks it off for good, "and then the way you treat the ladies might just catch up to you, _big daddy._ " 

Brendon wants to tell her that it’s not that he doesn’t respect women; it’s just that every day his certainty grows that they aren’t what he wants, and that apparently doesn't translate too great into his liaisons with, you know, women. But of course he doesn't say that, and maybe he doesn't even need to. It's probably no coincidence that more than one of his exes goes and hints heavily to the internet-at-large that things hadn't worked out in part because Brendon preferred the company of boys. 

Lana isn't _quite_ his last stab at the whole heterosexuality attempt, but after that Brendon kind of quits hooking up with any one person more than once.

\- 

The music they're making, the label they're on, the reputation they have, the kids that love them - all of it gives Brendon a space to flirt with the whole idea, try it on for size, and he loves and hates that at the same time. It makes it so easy for him to test the waters, feel his way, baby steps: _guys too, guys included!_ But the stage stuff is also stuff that he rarely gets called on, and when somebody does, the brush-off is easy: all the good frontmen say and do all kinds of crazy shit up there, homoerotic innuendo's a particular favorite among their demographic, it's them pushing boundaries, it doesn't have to _mean_ anything, it's not _real._

"Brendon," Ryan tells journalists indulgently, "just likes to make a scene sometimes." 

Lies and half-truths. He lives and moves through jokes layered over personas layered over fanservice layered over the masquerade of deliberate ambiguity. Onstage he nuzzles Ryan's cheek, accosts Jon for close-hipped guitar sex, tells Spencer to give it to him hot and hard, invites the boys in the audience to come find him after the show, and on one memorable occasion kisses Cash Colligan square on the mouth. Nobody ever bats an eye, and every time the affirmation beats in Brendon's chest a little surer, a little stronger: _yes I am. Yes, I am._

\- 

The thing is - the thing is, Brendon's kind of a contrarian himself. "Questions about my personal life can go fuck themselves," he vents to Jon, frustrated and worn-out. "I don't want our band reduced to 'That One With The Fag Frontman', and I'm not gonna be anyone's fucking poster child." 

But most of all -

It'd be nice, sure, if he could bring boys back to his house without having to sneak around. It'd be great if he didn't have to follow up on one-night stands with requests and pleas and bribes for silence. It'd be sweet to live his life not perpetually waiting for the other shoe to drop. It'd be awesome to be able to get up there and tell the world or whatever. 

But it's never gonna happen, because none of that's worth losing Thanksgiving with the whole clan, hearing tales of Kara’s fire-dancing exploits, play-wrestling with his nephew and carrying his nieces on his shoulders. It’s not worth an extra Christmas stocking for Shane, or sunny days at Disneyland, or the living room wall where his parents proudly display framed Panic posters and album covers. It’s not. 

Brendon already gave up his family once, and he thinks it might actually kill him to have it happen again.

He'd rather not test it to find out. 

He writes a little song for the next record, and the lyrics are about forgiveness and moving on and he means every word; but the first time Brendon lets a guy fuck him in the ass, he does sneak out of the apartment at five a.m. and go home and get in the shower and stay there until the water runs cold. He doesn't understand why it should be any different from the stuff he's already done, any different at all; but nonetheless he throws himself into hours of manic piano, plays until his energy's drained and his fingers are numb and he has to text Ryan and Spencer and make plans because he just can't stand to be alone for one minute longer. 

He folds himself down and rest his forehead against the cool porcelain side of the tub. With every note struck he thinks _sorryI'msosorry_. Out on the town that night he can't look anyone in the eye. And the whole time he wishes with every fiber of his being that it were otherwise. 

\- 

It's pretty gay - hell, _Brendon_ says it's pretty gay - but whenever the four of them get stoned together they always seem to end up in a warm, sleepy, affectionate pile. 

"Fuck, I miss my girlfriend," Ryan sighs, tucking his phone back into his pants as he drops down beside Jon. 

Even a year ago, Ryan probably would have been too cool to admit that shit to the guys. Spencer smiles, but just says, "Me too." 

"Me three." Jon. 

They all look over as one at Brendon, and then everybody's cracking up at once.

"Fuck, I miss when I thought I liked pussy?" Brendon says, rueful, joining the mass of bodies. "And the world was simple?" 

Spencer says, "I don't think the world was ever all that simple, Bren," and Brendon thinks of Audrey, of Lana, of little Brittany. His head droops onto Ryan's shoulder. 

"Okay. Yeah. Relatively simple, then. _Comparatively_ simple." 

They’re quiet then, quiet and close and breathing, and Brendon absently hums the bridge from this catchy thing that Eric’s been working on lately, that they might collaborate on recording. Two male voices weaving through one another, intertwining, _I want more, give me more, I want the burn and bliss again_. And back into the chorus: _all your plans and all your reveries stagger on while your tin gods are left behind..._

 

 **6. _and then some doors are open_**

 

Every damn time some famous person comes out, Clay Aiken or whothefuckever, half the people on tour with Brendon feel the need to inform him personally of the news. It’s always in this faux-offhand Oh Hey Did You Hear voice that suggests they're priding themselves on their subtlety, and it happens so regularly that it eventually gets to the point where it's pretty hilarious. In a _wow, that's really none of your fucking business_ kind of way.

"- today, today this merch chick brings me coffee and magazines, and she ends up showing me this whole spread of pictures from Ellen DeGeneres's wedding," he tells the phone as he tugs his socks on with one hand. "I wanted to be all 'You got me, it’s true! I’m _actually a lesbian,'_ " and on the other end Shane laughs and laughs. "'Cause that's clearly what she was going for, am I right -"

"Oh, funny story," Shane says, "today Regan's all, 'Hey hon, so I talked to another of my girlfriends who might be interested in getting a drink with your roommate sometime, you want me to see if I can set them up?'"

"Oh shit, not again." 

"Yeah, and I had to, like, try and steer the subject away, 'cause I couldn't tell her why that _probably_ wasn't gonna work out..."

"Thanks, dude." Brendon's still laughing. 

"I got your back."

"You know, though" - Brendon coughs - "you might as well, I guess. Like, she'd be cool about it, right? And I feel bad making you lie to your girl or whatever."

"You sure? I didn't wanna go ahead and do it without -"

"Yeah, I appreciate it. But no, go ahead, it's totally time."

"'Kay. But I'll tell her to, like. _Keep it secret, keep it safe."_

Brendon starts up his Gollum impression and then halfway through says in his normal voice, "Oh hey, funnier story! So it turns out it's actually kind of a super bad idea? To try deep throating? When you have to go sing a show later that day?"

"You _think,_ Bren?" comes Spencer's annoyed voice in the background, and Shane and Brendon both crack up. Brendon whines to Spencer, "I can't help my oral fixation!" and Shane groans, "TMI, dude, TMI."

"Homophobe."

"Yeah, yeah, my bad, tell me more about your BJ problems."

Still laughing, Brendon says, "I gotta go," (exaggerated stage whisper, "Spence is already pissed enough at me,") "hug the dog for me."

"You got it. Peace, man."

\- 

"Who is this?" Ryan asks him backstage, tipping his head toward the pop-spewing radio, and Brendon (humming cheerfully along) answers automatically, "Madonna!" 

"Huh. I like it," Ryan says decisively, and carries on texting Keltie. But Brendon feels the smile slide off his face, and he stares down at his lap, picks at a rip in the thigh of his pants, and asks eventually, "Is it stuff like that?" 

"What?" Ryan is too engrossed to spare him a glance. 

"How you can - how people can _tell_ , or whatever," Brendon says, picking the hole wider. 

Ryan looks up, now, slightly irritated at the interruption. "What are you _talking_ about?" 

"Well clearly there's _something_ about me that apparently makes it so fucking obvious to fucking everyone," Brendon says, bravado grin, twitching fingers. "I'd just like to know what the fuck it is, that's all," and he's going for sardonic but mostly he just sounds sad. "Like if it's shit like that. Fucking Madonna. I don't know." 

Ryan snorts. "Dude, what. No. You're just always the person I ask when I wanna know what a song is." And he goes back to his texting. 

\- 

If the information gets much beyond the insular little world of his band, Brendon doesn't hear about it. 

When he hangs out with the Panic girlfriends there are little things here and there that make him think they must know, and Brendon wonders how it went: wonders if they asked or hinted or just waited to be told. (He can almost hear Haley beginning tactfully, _So Brendon hasn't really dated anyone in a while, is that right?_ or Keltie's blunt question mid-pillowtalk, _Babe, about Brendon: Is he or isn't he?_ ) 

Sometimes Pete looks at Brendon like he might suspect, too. But Pete has a hell of a lot more tact than people give him credit for, and he never goes on record with anything more direct than, "I think that I do have friends who are gay and don’t know they are." 

These days Brendon's been going to bed with boys more and more, with girls less and less, but on average he's actually not getting laid that frequently. Which is annoying. It’s just that each and every stupid casual hookup means that Brendon has to take his chances that the guy in question won't go down to the gay bar that night and tell his friends, _Hey, so guess who I just had sex with?_ \- and there's something exciting about playing the odds like that, Brendon won't deny it, but he's also all too aware of the risks involved.

He wonders sometimes if maybe he should just wait until some fan asks him outright and then let it slip, spur-of-the-moment. Let the report spread until it’s an open secret with the fanbase; keep a shred of plausible deniability by refusing to say anything official. People have done that before, too. 

“I believe the phrase is ‘glass closet’,” says Spencer, and Brendon kicks his heel against the couch cushions and says lightly, “Can't I have a great glass elevator instead?” 

"Just make sure it's the right question you're answering," Jon advises him. "Not SO I HEAR YOU'RE IN STAR-CROSSED LOVE WITH RYAN ROSS BUT THE LABEL IS KEEPING YOU APART." 

Brendon laughs and rolls his eyes, and imagines answering in the affirmative the next time he gets confronted with it - one of their older, weirder devotees, _would you describe yourself as queer?_ or a curious teenager, _so my cousin thinks you're cute and he wants to know, do you ever hook up with guys?_ \- and knows he'll never do it. 

\- 

"You could maybe say you're, like, into both," Shane tells him, "kind of a, um -"

"Cop-out?" 

"Compromise. Maybe not now, but someday -" (Shane does not say _after your parents are gone_ , and Brendon hates to even think it, but that’s what they both know he means). "Just, like, a super low-key mention in some interview - solo, yeah? You said you wouldn't ever wanna do it in a Panic interview?"

Brendon had indeed. ”Yeah. It’d kind of defeat the purpose.” Which is to try as hard as possible never to let the whole question of Brendon's sexuality distract from the music. He and Shane have talked about that before, too.

"I mean, obviously you’d get some crap, no matter how much you downplayed it.” Shane clearly has a whole vision of how this might go, probably unfolding all movie-style in his head; Brendon knows a lot of dudes like that, who prefer Plans Of Action over Talking About Feelings. Whatever, though, support is support, and he lets Shane run with it. “Like, you just _know_ you’d have some people saying you were straight and just doing it for the attention -"

"And then I'd have these other people saying I was gay and just too much of a pussy to come all the way out." Brendon laughs acidly. "Which..." 

He has the random thought that Audrey would totally IM him out of nowhere to give him shit about how she always knew. (Lana Jade would not, and that is the difference between them.) 

"Right," says Shane, shrugging. "But my point is, man, you can't win either way. Here, gimme that." Using the hem of his t-shirt for grip, he twists the stubborn cap off Brendon’s beer and passes it back. 

“I totally had that,” Brendon says by way of thanks. “You suck.” 

"Anyway, like." Apparently Shane's internal script still has a ways to go. "I figure all you'd really have to do is run your mouth about how you're such a motherfucking stud that it'd be, like, a crime against humanity to confine yourself to just one gender -" 

Brendon giggles. 

"Or - if you wanted the total opposite angle - how you Care About The Person, Not What Parts They Have. Or even some vague shit about being down for anything once, or open to experimenting, or flexible." 

Brendon pulls a lecherous face.

"Not that kind of flexible, asshole," but Shane snickers too. "And then you'd probably have to date a couple of both to establish some, like“ - supremely disdainful - "cred. But then you'd be good to go, dude! Nothing but hot hot manflesh for the rest of your life!" 

Brendon thinks happy thoughts about hot hot manflesh. "Hey, and that bi shit's been getting all trendy, too," he says into his Corona. "I mean, Lindsay Lohan, right! The press would totally love me."

“Maybe if you were a hot chick instead of some awkward-looking dude,” Shane says, dodging the swat that Brendon aims at him. “No, but seriously, I bet by then everyone and their mom will be saying they're bi, and it won’t really be like some big fucking deal. You know?"

“Yeah,” Brendon says, “yeah, hopefully. And when that happens I will hire you to do my PR for me, man." He claps Shane on the shoulder, then snaps his fingers. "Oh shit, hey, do we have any of those pizza rolls left?” 

\- 

There are a few close shaves, of course, but they’re mostly because Brendon can never fucking think before he speaks - 

“Out?” Three heads whip around, three voices echo the word together, incredulous, and Brendon curses his big stupid mouth with its genius for the dumbest possible phrasing. Or maybe just Freudian slips. Fucking fuck, he’d even set up the whole joke and everything, and granted it was a crappy joke, but still. Fuck. 

"In ten years I see myself clean, married and out," and now the sudden intra-band moment of tense alertness - 

_Brendon, was that, what, are you doing this_ now? 

\- is so obvious that even the interviewer picks up on it, and Brendon probably just makes matters worse when he says immediately, "Oh, oh no!" He laughs it off with something about “my husband," and that's not a phrase he’s ever let himself think _[consciously]_ before and it makes him wince so hard.

But the guys step immediately into the breach, closing ranks around him. They deflect questions with thick sarcasm right and left, standard procedure when one of them gets asked something sensitive, and Brendon remembers all over again why he loves his band. 

\- 

Way back, Pete told them that in overseas press "you can get away with a little bit more when it comes to, like, that kind of shit," eyeroll aimed at Middle America, "nobody's gonna flip their shit like they do here," so Brendon plays around more freely when he's abroad, laughing his way through silly questions about same-sex seduction techniques. And he giggles like a fiend when he gets to read his bandmates' dumb little in-jokes in print: _Undetermined at this point. He doesn't have a wife yet, so..._

But when faced with The Question flat-out he still just. He can't. He -

“It’s not going to happen,” he says, and, “I think we’re all straight. To my knowledge.” 

Later, stoned to the point of philosophical, he rambles to his equally fucked-up bandmates about the difference between lies of commission and lies of omission and what he got taught in Sunday School back in the day. 

Ryan says quietly, “What about lies of necessity?” and Brendon doesn’t have an answer. 

\- 

"Anyway," he tells Ryan, waving a fresh blunt around and cringing exaggeratedly, "if I ever went public with it, you know I'd get the whole 'when did you first know?' thing, and, I mean. Scott motherfucking Stapp would be a _really_ embarrassing answer -" and Spencer laughs himself sick while Jon says, "True that. Dude is a _chotch.”_

 

 **7. _and light comes in, and there are skylights._**

 

Home for the holidays, basking in the triumph of a finished third record, Brendon is standing in his boxers in the pantry alcove at ten in the morning, staring at a shelf in that blearily indecisive just-got-up way.

He's half-listening to the cheerful phone conversation his mom's having in the kitchen. Just to hear her voice, really, he's not paying that much attention to the words, but he thinks she must be talking to that one cousin with a pre-teen son. The kid is in town for some church thing, Brendon has gathered, and will therefore be spending Christmas with the extended Urie family. 

He gets distracted wondering if that makes Ethan his second cousin or first cousin once removed - he can never remember which is which - and twirling his hair around one finger as he tries to decide between cereals.

"Oh gosh, yes, we've got quite the crowd this year," Mom is saying, with the bright laughter that so resembles Brendon’s own. "Ethan will have plenty of company. Let me see: Kara and Mike and Mason and Erika and the kids...I've got a friend from women's group who's due for dinner, too, and both of Boyd's brothers are probably going to stop by, with their wives..." 

Brendon yawns wide and silent against his palm, scritches his bare toes into the carpet and continues to ponder Cocoa Puffs vs. Apple Jacks. 

"There's Matt and Rava...of course you heard Kyla is engaged? Yes, it’s wonderful, really a great guy, he'll be here...and then Brendon and his friend, of course."

In the pantry, Brendon blinks and raises his head, because. Because he knows that particular inflection. Because that _friend_ was in the subtly weighted tone that he last heard his mom use back when Kyla, away at college, was totally living with her now-fiancé and everyone in the family knew it but no one acknowledged it outright. At the time it had driven Brendon crazy, that stupid fucking delicate euphemistic denial. _Kyla's *friend*._

_[Brendon and his *friend*]_

"...well, yes." He can hear the frown shading into her voice now. "The two of them visited this summer, too, and stayed here over Thanksgiving weekend - excuse me?" And wow, she suddenly sounds kind of defensive and - Brendon hates hearing either of his parents get pissed off about anything, so in the long pause that follows he grabs a cereal box at random and prepares to sidle on out of there. 

"Well, Marie, I - I don't know what to tell you." Mom's voice is rising. "I'm sorry that it makes you uncomfortable for Ethan to be around - no, no, I'm not saying I _condone_ \- but - Marie - _for God's sake, he's my baby boy and it's Christmas!"_ Her voice cracks right through the middle and it's like something no one should hear, something obscene, this sudden bleed-out in his parents' pretty kitchen. " _Yes_ they are both invited and _yes_ they're here in our home and _yes_ they'll be celebrating with us, with all of us! I'm sorry!" 

There's a minute of pure silence and Brendon stands still, so still, eyes fixed blindly on the sign above the front archway that proclaims in trim cursive lettering: _Love is spoken here._

"Of course," he finally hears, clipped and stiff like Mom only ever sounds when she's fucking upset. "Of course, Marie, if you feel that way. Let us know when you've got other plans made for Ethan's Christmas. We'd be happy to help with transportation, whatever you need...I'd better go now, I've got something in the oven." The oven isn't even on. Brendon would know its comforting hum anywhere. "Mm-hm. God bless. Bye."

Brendon waits until he's totally sure she's left the kitchen. Then he flees, breakfast forgotten, appetite gone. 

\- 

He creeps in quiet, turning the lock behind him. He steps over the sleeping bag and air mattress (untouched, unused) that Dad dragged out of storage last week and set up so carefully on the floor of Brendon’s old bedroom. 

He treads on a creaky board; it squeaks loudly, and the bedcovers shift and roll. Brendon slides in underneath them, curls up against a solid, muscular back. He inhales the sharp scent of sex, the warm scent of boy, and his breath falters a little when he lets it out again. 

A muffled murmur from beside him, deep and husky. "Bren?" 

"Yeah, it's me," Brendon says, "shhh, go back to sleep," and listens through the walls for the faint, faint sound of his mother weeping.


End file.
